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- May 2022
- Case
Founder Collective
By: Jo Tango and Alys Ferragamo
FC launched in 2009 with a clear mission: to be the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage. In keeping with its mission, FC maintained smaller fund sizes and was not a lifecycle investor. By November of 2021, however, the seed market had gotten more...
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- March 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Swvl: Smart Mobility for the Masses
By: Krishna Palepu, Esel Çekin and Menna Hassan
The case focuses on strategy and governance issues at Swvl, a tech-enabled mass mobility marketplace. It describes the journey of CEO and Chairman Mostafa Kandil on his journey from founding the company to its listing on Nasdaq. Since its founding in Egypt in 2017,...
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- 2022
- Book
Leadership to Last: How Great Leaders Leave Legacies Behind
By: Geoffrey Jones and Tarun Khanna
Society tends to glorify the get-rich-quick entrepreneur who builds a company, takes it public and then (maybe) contributes to charity.
In Leadership to Last, Geoffrey Jones and Tarun Khanna discuss the interviews they and other Harvard faculty have undertaken...
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- October 2021 (Revised February 2022)
- Case
upGrad: Delivering Career Outcomes Online: Degree by Degree
By: John J-H Kim, Anjali Raina and Rachna Chawla
In August 2021, the founders of upGrad, the latest unicorn in the Indian higher education online space, were deciding how to best use the funds to execute on their ambitious growth plans. Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar and Phalgun Kompalli had envisioned upGrad as an...
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- September 2021 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
Harambe: Mobilizing Capital in Africa
By: Anywhere (Siko) Sikochi, Dilyana Karadzhova Botha and Francesco Tronci
Harambe was a non-profit organization whose mission was to build an ecosystem to identify promising young African entrepreneurs and provide them access to training, markets, capital, and support networks. From 2007 to 2021, Harambe had grown to a network of 367...
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- May 2021
- Article
Mutual Funds as Venture Capitalists? Evidence from Unicorns
By: Josh Lerner, Sergey Chernenko and Yao Zeng
The past decade saw the rise of both “founder-friendly” venture financings and non-traditional investors, frequently with liquidity constraints. Using detailed contract data, we study open-end mutual funds investing in private venture-backed firms. We posit an...
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- May 2020 (Revised November 2021)
- Supplement
Valuing Peloton
Peloton Interactive, a well-known unicorn in the connected fitness space, had gone public with a market capitalization of over $8.0 billion. In the weeks following its public debut, Peloton’s stock price fell by over 25%. Taylor Knox, a stock analyst and enthusiastic...
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- May 2020 (Revised October 2021)
- Case
Valuing Peloton
Peloton Interactive, a well-known venture-capital-backed unicorn in the connected fitness space, recently had gone public with a market capitalization of over $8.0 billion. However, in the weeks following its public debut, Peloton’s stock price had fallen by over 25%....
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- November 2019 (Revised May 2020)
- Case
Collibra
By: Lynda M. Applegate, Jeffrey F. Rayport and Julia Kelley
Founded in 2008 at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Collibra was a data intelligence company that found product-market fit in the years after the global financial crisis when many companies were under pressure from consumers and governments to improve their data management...
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Keywords:
Entrepreneurship;
Governance;
Innovation and Invention;
Technological Innovation;
Markets;
Information Technology;
Applications and Software;
Technology Adoption;
Digital Platforms;
Internet and the Web;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Customer Satisfaction;
Expansion;
Information Technology Industry;
Technology Industry;
Europe;
Belgium;
Brussels;
North and Central America;
United States;
New York (city, NY);
New York (state, US)
- May 2019
- Teaching Note
Careem: Raising a Unicorn
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai
Teaching Note for HBS No. 818-022.
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- February 2019 (Revised September 2019)
- Case
Theranos: The Unicorn That Wasn't
By: Joseph B. Fuller and John Masko
In 2003, 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes founded a startup dedicated to making blood testing easier and more affordable. By 2015, her company, Theranos, was worth $9 billion. It boasted a star-studded board and contracts with national pharmacy and supermarket chains...
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Keywords:
Theranos;
Blood;
Lab Testing;
Fraud;
Holmes;
Balwani;
Shultz;
Carreyrou;
Securities And Exchange Commission;
Food And Drug Administration;
FDA;
SEC;
Health Testing and Trials;
Corporate Accountability;
Organizational Culture;
Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising;
Crime and Corruption;
Entrepreneurship;
Medical Devices and Supplies Industry
- September 2018 (Revised November 2018)
- Case
Careem: Base Camp or Mountain Peak? Designing an OS for Scaling
By: Shikhar Ghosh, Gamze Yucaoglu and Alpana Thapar
This case focuses on designing a fast growing organization. It is part of a two-case set that is taught together to cover the scaling journey.
Careem, a Dubai-based ride-hailing service aimed to ‘simplify and improve the lives of people, and build an awesome... View Details
Careem, a Dubai-based ride-hailing service aimed to ‘simplify and improve the lives of people, and build an awesome... View Details
- August 2018 (Revised August 2019)
- Case
Oscar Health Insurance: What Lies Ahead for a Unicorn Insurance Entrant?
By: Leemore Dafny and Victoria Marone
Keywords:
Oscar Insurance;
Fintech;
US Health Care;
Affordable Care Act (ACA);
Health Insurance Marketplaces;
Insurer Competition;
Provider Consolidation;
Market Entry;
Health Care and Treatment;
Entrepreneurship;
Market Entry and Exit;
Negotiation;
Growth Management;
Health Industry;
Insurance Industry;
New York (state, US);
New Jersey
- January 2018 (Revised October 2019)
- Case
ZBJ: Building a Global Outsourcing Platform for Knowledge Workers (A)
By: Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen and Shirley Sun
ZBJ.com (ZBJ), an online platform that connects knowledge workers to small- and medium-sized enterprises, is China’s largest outsourcing platform. Founded by Mingyue Zhu in 2006, ZBJ had grown into a unicorn with 4,000 employees and a daily transaction volume of RMB15...
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- September 2017 (Revised March 2023)
- Case
Careem: Raising a Unicorn
By: Shikhar Ghosh and Alpana Thapar
This case follows two ex-McKinsey consultants, Magnus Olsson and Mudassir Sheikha, who in search of their true purpose decide to found Careem, a Dubai-based ride-hailing service. Following its launch in July 2012, Careem experiences rapid growth of 30% per month in the...
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- December 2016 (Revised December 2018)
- Case
From Start-Up to Grown-Up Nation: The Future of the Israeli Innovation Ecosystem
By: Elie Ofek and Margot Eiran
In June 2016, Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, wrestled with how to sustain Israel’s strong innovation track record and the country’s reputation as the “startup nation.” Despite the economic miracle the country had wrought since its founding, he...
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Keywords:
Israel;
Israeli Start-up Nation;
Innovation Economy;
Entrepreneurial Mindset;
Scaling-up;
Unicorns;
Innovation Clusters;
High-tech;
Innovation Management;
Multinational Corporation R＆D Centers;
Social Equality;
Two-tier Economy;
Liberalizing An Economy;
Foreign Investment;
Military Service;
Quality Of Human Capital;
Socioeconomic Gaps;
Labor Force Participation;
Government Initiatives;
Innovation and Management;
Entrepreneurship;
Venture Capital;
Business Startups;
Government and Politics;
Economy;
Equality and Inequality;
Education;
Resource Allocation;
Globalization;
Israel